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| Sunday, 23 March 2003 |
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How the West Indies got its name by Padma Edirisinghe Maybe the term "historical mistakes" is an understatement or misnomer used for mistakes made in the dim recesses of history that continue to baffle the lesser mortals who have entered earth long after those who orchestrated these mistakes have left it.
The lesser mortal here is my eldest son who though holding the reins of a leading company simply got baffled recently while watching West Indies play against some other geographical entity that adorns this strange globe of ours. By the way my son belongs to that generation in whose student time history had got erased from the school curriculum,. Why West Indies, he asked me over the phone that works its marvellous magic across the hills of the highlands, "Is there an East Indies too?" I explained to him in brief the circumstances that led to the group of islands off the Southern continent of America to be baptized as West Indies and thought it fitting to enlighten any reader interested on this mistake made early as the 15" Century by no less a person than the great explorer, Christopher Columbus. Before we go on to the actual tale let me give you the Encyclopedia definition of West Indies. "West Indies is an archipelago extending in a curved chain for over 1500 miles from the Florida peninsula in North America to the coast of Venezuela enclosing the Caribbean Sea. In 1958 was created the Federation of the West Indies comprising Antigua, Dominica, St. Kits, Novis, Anquilla, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Trinidad and Tobago." Any nitwit can conclude that almost all these names have been superimposed by the Christian West erasing any native name that already existed. In fact Wells give names of two native tribes that got completely exterminated under colonial rule. Now we come to the actual tale enacted in those far off adventurous days of the West when the white men equipped with many conveniences as the mariners" compass began their explorations all over the world in large galleys and ships. Many a youth who had an inquiring mind took to the vast endless sea looking for undiscovered lands and loot of enemy ships. Columbus hailing from Genoa was bitten by the sea itch and turned pirate but his vessel was shipwrecked off Portugal's coastline making him adopt Portugal as his homeland. At this time landing on exotic India was every adventurous seaman's dream. Columbus not only wanted to land in this country that had been mesmerizing the world ever since recorded history began there, but he wanted to travel westwards and land on it to substantiate the 'Round World Theory'. He went to the King of Portugal and asked for sponsorship but was rebuffed. Undaunted he visited the Court of Spain and managed to get an audience with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella and reveal his plan. Queen Isabella agreed to patronize him and three small ships were provided to him. Let me be impertinent enough to ask the great H. G. Wells, author of "A short history of the world" to take over now. "After a voyage of two months and nine days he (Columbus) came to a land which he believed to be India but which was really a new continent whose distinct existence the Old World had never suspected. He returned to Spain with gold, cotton, strange beasts and two wild painted "Indians" to be baptized!" (exclamation mark is the writer's). But Wells was writing a short world history and does not go on to detail out that it was not actually the mainland of America that he had landed on. According to the Encyclopedia, Columbus had actually landed on those islands that form that long Curve. The Encyclopedia puts it thus: "On August 8", 1492 Columbus set sail in the Santa Maria alongwith ships Pinta and Nina. On its first voyage it landed in the Bahamas and Hispaniola. On the second voyage (1493) Guadelope was visited and the Petro Rico and Jamaica. On the third voyage Columbus reached Trinidad and touched on the main land of America". The great explorer had passed away at the dawn of the 16th Century without ever realizing his mistake ie. that he had mistaken the chain of islands off America to be Indian soil. It is these islands, that after the mistake was realized that they did not belong to Indian Territory that came to be called West Indies or West India. And its inhabitants began to be called West Indians. The name got so entrenched that India in the 17th Century began to be called East India. In fact the London Trading Company that secured the massive sub-continent of Bharathadesha as a colony for Britain, so diminutive in size when compared to the subjugated colony, was called the East India Company. For the West at this time Asia and India were almost identical. The whole colonial empire revolved around India. West Indies later turned into a huge plantation terrain of the resourceful Britishers. Sugarcane was the main crop. Slaves from Africa were set to work on them. Also labour from areas as Tanjore in India was exported there as done to our country. The present day West Indians are said to be descendants from a mix of the original tribes who domiciled the area and the African slaves and Indian labourers brought over as labour force. In fact the writer made an acquaintance with a lady professor while in England who had a skin colour that was neither white nor Black. It was not brown either but a sort of gleaming ashy white. Naturally being of an inquisitive mind the query was made as to which racial group she belonged. Pat came the answer that she is a West Indian, to be more specific a Jamaican. Then very frankly she went on to say that her ancestors hailed originally from Tanjore in India and in the 17th or 18th century or so had been shipped to work on the Jamaican plantations. "They would have been very poor, you know to come over like that, I studied in a missionary school and forged ahead". She even narrated the various Hindu religious rites her grandmother practised that she and other children watched with amusement and curiosity. There had been Kovils in the West Indian Islands in her childhood. "Not now?" "No. Now almost all are of Christian faith or of no faith and the few Kovils sprinkled here and there have turned into museums that encase the defunct Hindu culture". All this of course I did not tell my son as his telephone bill would have sky rocketed but here I am only expending my own energy rambling from Christopher Columbus's famous mistake to the marvels of racial formations. It is fitting to conclude this ramble with this quotation from Wells, "We have to remember that human races can all interbreed freely and that they separate, mingle and reunite as clouds do". Fortunately that is not a historical mistake but a historical truism. |
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